Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges

  Lecture The First. Swift

  In treating of the English humourists of the past age, it is of the menand of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission tospeak to you; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope toentertain you with a merely humorous or facetious story. Harlequin withouthis mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself,the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go andsee Harlequin(21)--a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest ofus, whose Self must always be serious to him, under whatever mask, ordisguise, or uniform he presents it to the public. And as all of you heremust needs be grave when you think of your own past and present, you willnot look to find, in the histories of those whose lives and feelings I amgoing to try and describe to you, a story that is otherwise than serious,and often very sad. If Humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feelmore interest about humorous writers than about the private life of poorHarlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the power ofmaking you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kindpresence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to agreat number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule.The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity,your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture--yourtenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the bestof his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions andpassions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-daypreacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels thetruth best, we regard him, esteem him--sometimes love him. And, as hisbusiness is to mark other people's lives and peculiarities, we moralizeupon _his_ life when he is gone--and yesterday's preacher becomes the textfor to-day's sermon.

  Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergymen,(22) Swiftwas born in Dublin in 1667, seven months after the death of his father,who had come to practise there as a lawyer. The boy went to school atKilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degreewith difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. In 1688, by therecommendation of his mother, Swift was received into the family of SirWilliam Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in1693, and the next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the smallIrish preferment which he got and returned to Temple, in whose family heremained until Sir William's death in 1699. His hopes of advancement inEngland failing, Swift returned to Ireland, and took the living ofLaracor. Hither he invited Hester Johnson,(23) Temple's natural daughter,with whom he had contracted a tender friendship, while they were bothdependants of Temple's. And with an occasional visit to England, Swift nowpassed nine years at home.

  In 1709 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to Ireland, duringwhich he took possession of his deanery of St. Patrick, he now passed fiveyears in England, taking the most distinguished part in the politicaltransactions which terminated with the death of Queen Anne. After herdeath, his party disgraced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift returnedto Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote thefamous _Drapier's Letters_ and _Gulliver's Travels_. He married HesterJohnson (Stella) and buried Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) who had followedhim to Ireland from London, where she had contracted a violent passion forhim. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, which he quitted for the lasttime on hearing of his wife's illness. Stella died in January, 1728, andSwift not until 1745, having passed the last five of the seventy-eightyears of his life with an impaired intellect and keepers to watch him.(24)

  You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers; his life hasbeen told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admiresbut can't bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson,(25) who,forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famousIrishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition,scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of thestreet. Dr. Wilde, of Dublin,(26) who has written a most interestingvolume on the closing years of Swift's life, calls Johnson "the mostmalignant of his biographers": it is not easy for an English critic toplease Irishmen--perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson trulyadmires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's change of politics,or doubt his sincerity of religion: about the famous Stella and Vanessacontroversy the Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he couldnot give the Dean that honest hand of his; the stout old man puts it intohis breast, and moves off from him.(27)

  Would we have liked to live with him? That is a question which, in dealingwith these people's works, and thinking of their lives and peculiarities,every reader of biographies must put to himself. Would you have liked tobe a friend of the great Dean? I should like to have been Shakespeare'sshoeblack--just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped him--tohave run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene face. I should like,as a young man, to have lived on Fielding's staircase in the Temple, andafter helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with hislatchkey, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talkand crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who wouldnot give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, andGoldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison'scompanionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition--butSwift? If you had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a greatrespect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal inmere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if,undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would,have quailed before you,(28) and not had the pluck to reply, and gonehome, and years after written a foul epigram about you--watched for you ina sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirtybludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered hisvanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightfulcompany in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, sobright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in viewbut the indulgence of his humour, and that he was the most reckless,simple creature in the world. How he would have torn your enemies topieces for you! and made fun of the Opposition! His servility was soboisterous that it looked like independence;(29) he would have done yourerrands, but with the air of patronizing you, and after fighting yourbattles masked in the street or the press, would have kept on his hatbefore your wife and daughters in the drawing-room, content to take thatsort of pay for his tremendous services as a bravo.(30)

  He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke:--"All myendeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title andfortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion ofmy parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputationof wit and great learning does the office of a blue ribbon or acoach-and-six."(31)

  Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who says, "These are mybrains; with these I'll win titles and compete with fortune. These are mybullets; these I'll turn into gold"; and he hears the sound ofcoaches-and-six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand anddeliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop'sapron, and his grace's blue ribbon, and my lady's brocade petticoat in themud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the thirdof a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers ofhis own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre andcrosier in it, which he intends to have for _his_ share, has been delayedon the way from St. James's; and he waits and waits until nightfall, whenhis runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road,and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, andrides away into his own country.(32)

  Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral or adorn a taleof ambition, as any hero's that ever lived and failed. But we mustremember that the morality was lax--that other gentlemen besides himselftook the road in his day--that public society was in a strange disordere
dcondition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne wasbeing fought and won, and lost--the bells rung in William's victory, in thevery same tone with which they would have pealed for James's. Men wereloose upon politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as well as oldbeliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in thestorm. As in the South Sea Bubble almost everybody gambled; as in theRailway mania--not many centuries ago--almost every one took his unluckyshare; a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition of Swift,could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring athis opportunity. His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequentmisanthropy, are ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate convictionof mankind's unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. Hisyouth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble ties,and powerless in a mean dependence; his age was bitter,(33) like that of agreat genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it,and thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man mayattribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, ordisappointment, or self-will. What public man--what statesman projecting a_coup_--what king determined on an invasion of his neighbour--what satiristmeditating an onslaught on society or an individual, can't give a pretextfor his move? There was a French general the other day who proposed tomarch into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge forhumanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen--there is always some excusefor men of the aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike,predatory, eager for fight, plunder, dominion.(34)

  As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck--as strong a wing as ever beat,belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out ofhis claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and notwithout awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars.

  That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, on the 30th November,1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister island thehonour and glory, but, it seems to me, he was no more an Irishman than aman born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo.(35) Goldsmith was anIrishman, and always an Irishman: Steele was an Irishman, and always anIrishman: Swift's heart was English and in England, his habits English,his logic eminently English; his statement is elaborately simple; he shunstropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift andeconomy, as he used his money; with which he could be generous andsplendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was noneed to spend it. He never indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric,lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you with agrave simplicity and a perfect neatness.(36) Dreading ridicule too, as aman of his humour--above all an Englishman of his humour--certainly would,he is afraid to use the poetical power which he really possessed; oneoften fancies in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might;that he does not speak above his voice, as if were, and the tone ofsociety.

  His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge ofpolite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could nothave pursued very sedulously during that reckless career at Dublin, Swiftgot under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling inafter-life what quantities of books he devoured there, and how KingWilliam taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Sheneand at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at the upperservants' table, that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years'apprenticeship--wore a cassock that was only not a livery--bent down a kneeas proud as Lucifer's to supplicate my lady's good graces, or run on hishonour's errands.(37) It was here, as he was writing at Temple's table, orfollowing his patron's walk, that he saw and heard the men who hadgoverned the great world--measured himself with them, looking up from hissilent corner, gauged their brains, weighed their wits, turned them, andtried them, and marked them. Ah, what platitudes he must have heard! whatfeeble jokes! what pompous commonplaces! what small men they must haveseemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, uncouth, silentIrish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck Temple that that Irishmanwas his master? I suppose that dismal conviction did not present itselfunder the ambrosial wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift.Swift sickened, rebelled, left the service--ate humble pie and came backagain; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, swallowing scorn,and submitting with a stealthy rage to his fortune.

  Temple's style is the perfection of practised and easy good-breeding. Ifhe does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he professes a verygentlemanly acquaintance with it; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, itwas the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelophis head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears bucklesand square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and younever hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or anyrival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitatedfor him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or MoorPark; and lets the King's party, and the Prince of Orange's party battleit out among themselves. He reveres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps evertestified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow); he admires the Prince ofOrange; but there is one person whose ease and comfort he loves more thanall the princes in Christendom, and that valuable member of society ishimself, Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat;between his study-chair and his tulip-beds,(38) clipping his apricots andpruning his essays,--the statesman, the ambassador no more; but thephilosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James'sas at Shene; where, in place of kings and fair ladies, he pays his courtto the Ciceronian majesty; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse; ordallies by the south wall with the ruddy nymph of gardens.

  Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal of venerationfrom his household, and to have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled bythe people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants which heloved. When he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at hisindisposition; mild Dorothea, his wife, the best companion of the best ofmen--

  Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate.

  As for Dorinda, his sister,--

  Those who would grief describe, might come and trace Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. To see her weep, joy every face forsook, And grief flung sables on each menial look. The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, That furnished life and spirit through the whole.

  Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into amourning livery, a fine image? One of the menials wrote it, who did notlike that Temple livery nor those twenty-pound wages. Cannot one fancy theuncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, books and papers in hand,following at his Honour's heels in the garden walk; or taking his Honour'sorders as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has the gout,and his feet all blistered with moxa? When Sir William has the gout orscolds it must be hard work at the second table;(39) the Irish secretaryowned as much afterwards: and when he came to dinner, how he must havelashed and growled and torn the household with his gibes and scorn! Whatwould the steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards--and thisone had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if the truth wereknown--and what a contempt his Excellency's own gentleman must have had forParson Teague from Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were always at war.It is hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) And whatmust have been the sadness, the sadness and terror, of the housekeeper'slittle daughter with the curling black ringlets and the sweet smilingface, when the secretary who teaches her to read and write, and whom sheloves and reverences above all things--above mother, above mild Dorothea,above that tremendous Sir William in his square-toes and periwig,--when_Mr. Swift_ comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has nota kind word even for little Hester Johnson?

  Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescension was evenmore cruel than his frow
ns. Sir William _would_ perpetually quote Latinand the ancient classics a propos of his gardens and his Dutch statues and_plates-bandes_, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, JuliusCaesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabodescribing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. A propos of beans, he wouldmention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that this preceptprobably meant that wise men should abstain from public affairs. _He_ is aplacid Epicurean; _he_ is a Pythagorean philosopher; _he_ is a wiseman--that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? One can imagine thedowncast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which theyemit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope says nobly (aseverything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), "Hiseyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming archness in them."And one person in that household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park,saw heaven nowhere else.

  But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He washalf-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat which hedevised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stockof books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which punishedand tormented him through life. He could not bear the place or theservitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, from which we havequoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the funerealprocession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his owngrief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune,and even hope.

  I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in which,after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteouslytowards his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He asks fortestimonials for orders. "The particulars required of me are what relateto morals and learning--and the reasons of quitting your Honour'sfamily--that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. Theyare left entirely to your Honour's mercy, though in the first I think Icannot reproach myself for anything further than for _infirmities_. Thisis all I dare at present beg from your Honour, under circumstances of lifenot worth your regard: what is left me to wish (next to the health andprosperity of your Honour and family) is that Heaven would one day allowme the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgements at your feet. I beg mymost humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your Honour's ladyand sister."--Can prostration fall deeper? Could a slave bow lower?(40)

  Twenty years afterwards, Bishop Kennet, describing the same man, says,"Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody but me.When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr.Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting theEarl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a placefor a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my LordTreasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as memberof the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going into the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to sayto him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling thetime of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was toofast. 'How can I help it,' says the doctor, 'if the courtiers give me awatch that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that thebest poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translationof Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe; 'For,'says he, 'he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas forhim.'(41) Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room,beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him,--both went off just before prayers."There's a little malice in the Bishop's "just before prayers".

  This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, though notaltogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men too, in themidst of these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousandanecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His hand wasconstantly stretched out to relieve an honest man--he was cautious abouthis money, but ready.--If you were in a strait would you like such abenefactor? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly wordfrom Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and adinner.(42) He insulted a man as he served him, made women cry, guestslook foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions intopoor men's faces. No; the Dean was no Irishman--no Irishman ever gave butwith a kind word and a kind heart.

  It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of St.Patrick's performed his family devotions every morning regularly, but withsuch secrecy, that the guests in his house were never in the least awareof the ceremony. There was no need surely why a church dignitary shouldassemble his family privily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathenpersecution. But I think the world was right, and the bishops who advisedQueen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the author of the_Tale of a Tub_ to a bishopric, gave perfectly good advice. The man whowrote the arguments and illustrations in that wild book, could not but beaware what must be the sequel of the propositions which he laid down. Theboon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends ofhis life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must haveheard many an argument, and joined in many a conversation over Pope'sport, or St. John's burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at othermen's boards.

  I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift'sreligion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look outfor a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the _Beggar's Opera_--Gay, thewildest of the wits about town--it was this man that Jonathan Swift advisedto take orders--to invest in a cassock and bands--just as he advised him tohusband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest.(43) TheQueen, and the bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting thereligion of that man.

  I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious views, except inso far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humour. Themost notorious sinners of all those fellow mortals whom it is our businessto discuss--Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and Ibelieve really fervent, in their expressions of belief; they belabouredfreethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions,going out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute theirneighbour's, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did withdebt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour, they got up on theirknees, and cried "Peccavi" with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor HarryFielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of Englandmen; they abhorred Popery, atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries ingeneral; and hiccupped "Church and State" with fervour.

  But Swift? _His_ mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a verydifferent logical power. _He_ was not bred up in a tipsy guard-room, anddid not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct anargument from beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatalclearness. In his old age, looking at the _Tale of a Tub_, when he said,"Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" I think he wasadmiring not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius hadbrought him--a vast genius, a magnificent genius, a genius wonderfullybright, and dazzling, and strong,--to seize, to know, to see, to flash uponfalsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hiddenmotives, and expose the black thoughts of men,--an awful, an evil spirit.

  Ah, man! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you whose friendswere Pope and St. John--what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bindyourself to a lifelong hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored withsuch real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift was a reverent, was apious spirit--for Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms andtempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break out inthe blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and themaddened hurricane of his life.

  It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of hisown scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put hisapostasy out to hire.(44) The paper left behind him
, called _Thoughts onReligion_, is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. Hesays of his sermons that he preached pamphlets: they have scarce aChristian characteristic; they might be preached from the steps of asynagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost.There is little or no cant--he is too great and too proud for that; and, inso far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having putthat cassock on, it poisoned him: he was strangled in his bands. He goesthrough life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah inthe Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows thatthe night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God,it was! what a lonely rage and long agony--what a vulture that tore theheart of that giant!(45) It is awful to think of the great sufferings ofthis great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe wasso. I can't fancy Shakespeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. Thekings can have no company. But this man suffered so; and deserved so tosuffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain.

  The "saeva indignatio" of which he spoke as lacerating his heart, andwhich he dares to inscribe on his tombstone--as if the wretch who lay underthat stone waiting God's judgement had a right to be angry--breaks out fromhim in a thousand pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Againstmen in office, he having been overthrown; against men in England, hehaving lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never failsto rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous _Drapier's Letters_patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: theyare reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous andfabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is sogreat, but there is his enemy--the assault is wonderful for its activityand terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on hisenemies and felling them: one admires not the cause so much as thestrength, the anger, the fury of the champion. As is the case with madmen,certain subjects provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage isone of these; in a hundred passages in his writings he rages against it;rages against children; an object of constant satire, even morecontemptible in his eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poor curate with alarge family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails to bringdown from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, orFielding, in his most reckless moment of satire, have written anythinglike the Dean's famous "modest proposal" for eating children? Not one ofthese but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr.Dean has no such softness, and enters the nursery with the tread andgaiety of an ogre.(46) "I have been assured," says he in the _ModestProposal_, "by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, thata young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious,nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled;and I make no doubt it will equally serve in a _ragout_." And taking upthis pretty joke, as his way is, he argues it with perfect gravity andlogic. He turns and twists this subject in a score of different ways: hehashes it; and he serves it up cold; and he garnishes it; and relishes italways. He describes the little animal as "dropped from its dam'" advisingthat the mother should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as torender it plump and fat for a good table! "A child," says his reverence,"will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the familydines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish," and soon; and, the subject being so delightful that he can't leave it--heproceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires' tables, "thebodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve."Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process wellknown and practised in the Dean's gay days: when a lout entered thecoffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called "roasting" him. Thisis roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius forit. As the _Almanach des Gourmands_ says, _On nait rotisseur_.

  And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swift exposed theunreasonableness of loving and having children. In Gulliver, the folly oflove and marriage is urged by graver arguments and advice. In the famousLilliputian kingdom, Swift speaks with approval of the practice ofinstantly removing children from their parents and educating them by theState; and amongst his favourite horses, a pair of foals are stated to bethe very utmost a well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. Infact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love wasunadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice andexample--God help him--which made him about the most wretched being in God'sworld.(47)

  The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as exemplified inthe cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our author's constant methodthrough all his works of humour. Given a country of people six inches orsixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousandwonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation.Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a white staffnear as tall as the mainmast of the _Royal Sovereign_, the King ofBrobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, asrepresented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. "TheEmperor of Lilliput's features are strong and masculine" (what asurprising humour there is in this description!)--"the Emperor's features,"Gulliver says, "are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an archednose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbswell-proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller _by thebreadth of my nail_ than any of his court, which alone is enough to strikean awe into beholders."

  What a surprising humour there is in these descriptions! How noble thesatire is here! how just and honest! How perfect the image! Mr. Macaulayhas quoted the charming lines of the poet, where the king of the pygmiesis measured by the same standard. We have all read in Milton of the spearthat was like "the mast of some tall admiral", but these images are surelylikely to come to the comic poet originally. The subject is before him. Heis turning it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. The figure suggestsitself naturally to him, and comes out of his subject, as in thatwonderful passage, when Gulliver's box having been dropped by the eagleinto the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship's cabin, hecalls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on thetable, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the_veracity_ of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come from sucha country as Brobdingnag he would have blundered so.

  But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best in that abounding book,is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable country, describes hisparting from his master the horse.(48) "I took," he says, "a second leaveof my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, hedid me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant howmuch I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractorsare pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a person shoulddescend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferioras I. Neither am I ignorant how apt some travellers are to boast ofextraordinary favours they have received. But if these censurers werebetter acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of theHouyhnhnms they would soon change their opinion."

  The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evidence, the astoundinggravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how much he has been censured,the nature of the favour conferred, and the respectful exultation at thereceipt of it, are surely complete; it is truth topsy-turvy, entirelylogical and absurd.

  As for the humour and conduct of this famous fable, I suppose there is noperson who reads but must admire; as for the moral, I think it horrible,shameful, unmanly, blasphemous; and giant and great as this Dean is, I saywe should hoot him. Some of this audience mayn't have read the last partof Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr.Punch to persons about to marry, and say "Don't". When Gulliver firstlands among the Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees andassault him, and he describes himself as "almost stifled with the filthwhich fell about him". The reader of the fourth part of _G
ulliver'sTravels_ is like the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo language;a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations againstmankind--tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manlinessand shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene.

  And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of his creed--thefatal rocks towards which his logic desperately drifted. That last part ofGulliver is only a consequence of what has gone before; and theworthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility,the general vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, thepompous dullness, the mean aims, the base successes--all these were presentto him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemiesagainst Heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadfulallegory--of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate,and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers somean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance isbetter than his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secretremorse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in him, that heshould see all the world bloodshot? We view the world with our own eyes,each of us; and we make from within us the world we see. A weary heartgets no gladness out of sunshine; a selfish man is sceptical aboutfriendship, as a man with no ear doesn't care for music. A frightfulself-consciousness it must have been, which looked on mankind so darklythrough those keen eyes of Swift.

  A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who interrupted ArchbishopKing and Swift in a conversation which left the prelate in tears, and fromwhich Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agitation in hiscountenance, upon which the archbishop said to Delany, "You have just metthe most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness youmust never ask a question."

  The most unhappy man on earth;--_Miserrimus_--what a character of him! Andat this time all the great wits of England had been at his feet. AllIreland had shouted after him, and worshipped as a liberator, a saviour,the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier BickerstaffGulliver--the most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets of his day, hadapplauded him, and done him homage; and at this time writing over toBolingbroke, from Ireland, he says, "It is time for me to have done withthe world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was calledinto the best, _and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in ahole_."

  We have spoken about the men, and Swift's behaviour to them; and now itbehoves us not to forget that there are certain other persons in thecreation who had rather intimate relations with the great Dean.(49) Twowomen whom he loved and injured are known by every reader of books sofamiliarly that if we had seen them, or if they had been relatives of ourown, we scarcely could have known them better. Who hasn't in his mind animage of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair and tender creature: pure andaffectionate heart! Boots it to you, now that you have been at rest for ahundred and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold heart whichcaused yours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and grief--bootsit to you now, that the whole world loves and deplores you? Scarce anyman, I believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast a flower ofpity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, so lovely, soloving, so unhappy! you have had countless champions; millions of manlyhearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fondtradition of your beauty; we watch and follow your tragedy, your brightmorning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom.We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of English story.

  And if Stella's love and innocence are charming to contemplate, I will saythat in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite of mysteriousseparation and union, of hope delayed and sickened heart--in the teeth ofVanessa, and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift intosuch woful pitfalls and quagmires of amorous perplexity--in spite of theverdicts of most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience andconversation go, generally take Vanessa's part in the controversy--in spiteof the tears which Swift caused Stella to shed, and the rocks and barrierswhich fate and temper interposed, and which prevented the pure course ofthat true love from running smoothly--the brightest part of Swift's story,the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift's, is his lovefor Hester Johnson. It has been my business, professionally of course, togo through a deal of sentimental reading in my time, and to acquaintmyself with love-making, as it has been described in various languages,and at various ages of the world; and I know of nothing more manly, moretender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these brief notes, writtenin what Swift calls "his little language" in his journal to Stella.(50) Hewrites to her night and morning often. He never sends away a letter to herbut he begins a new one on the same day. He can't bear to let go her kindlittle hand, as it were. He knows that she is thinking of him, and longingfor him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes her letters from under hispillow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, with fond epithets andpretty caresses--as he would to the sweet and artless creature who lovedhim. "Stay," he writes one morning--it is the 14th of December, 1710--"stay,I will answer some of your letter this morning in bed--let me see. Come andappear, little letter! Here I am, says he, and what say you to Stella thismorning fresh and fasting? And can Stella read this writing withouthurting her dear eyes?" he goes on, after more kind prattle and fondwhispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then--the good angel ofhis life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard fate that wrungfrom them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tenderbosom. A hard fate: but would she have changed it? I have heard a womansay that she would have taken Swift's cruelty to have had his tenderness.He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of herafter she is gone; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of herbeauty, with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching;in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts into pathos; hiscold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees,so to speak, before the angel, whose life he had embittered, confesses hisown wretchedness and unworthiness, and adores her with cries of remorseand love:--

  When on my sickly couch I lay, Impatient both of night and day, And groaning in unmanly strains, Called every power to ease my pains, Then Stella ran to my relief, With cheerful face and inward grief, And though by Heaven's severe decree She suffers hourly more than me, No cruel master could require From slaves employed for daily hire, What Stella, by her friendship warmed, With vigour and delight performed. Now, with a soft and silent tread, Unheard she moves about my bed: My sinking spirits now supplies With cordials in her hands and eyes. Best patron of true friends! beware; You pay too dearly for your care If, while your tenderness secures My life, it must endanger yours: For such a fool was never found Who pulled a palace to the ground, Only to have the ruins made Materials for a house decayed.

  One little triumph Stella had in her life--one dear little piece ofinjustice was performed in her favour, for which I confess, for my part, Ican't help thanking fate and the Dean. _That other person_ was sacrificedto her--that--that young woman, who lived five doors from Dr. Swift'slodgings in Bury Street, and who flattered him, and made love to him insuch an outrageous manner--Vanessa was thrown over.

  Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to those he wrote toher.(51) He kept Bolingbroke's, and Pope's, and Harley's, andPeterborough's: but Stella, "very carefully," the _Lives_ say, keptSwift's. Of course: that is the way of the world: and so we cannot tellwhat her style was, or of what sort were the little letters which thedoctor placed there at night, and bade to appear from under his pillow ofa morning. But in Letter IV of that famous collection he describes hislodging in Bury Street, where he has the first floor, a dining-room andbedchamber, at eight shillings a week; and in Letter VI he says "he hasvisited a lady just come to town", whose name somehow is not mentioned;and in Letter VIII he enters a query
of Stella's--"What do you mean 'thatboards near me, that I dine with now and then?' What the deuce! You knowwhom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do." Ofcourse she does. Of course Swift has not the slightest idea of what shemeans. But in a few letters more it turns out that the doctor has been todine "gravely" with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh: then that he has been to "hisneighbour": then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the wholeweek with his neighbour! Stella was quite right in her previsions. She sawfrom the very first hint what was going to happen; and scented Vanessa inthe air.(52) The rival is at the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher arereading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayerstogether, and learning Latin together, and conjugating _amo_, _amas_,_amavi_ together. The "little language" is over for poor Stella. By therule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't _amavi_ come after_amo_ and _amas_?

  The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa(53) you may peruse in Cadenus's own poemon the subject, and in poor Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses andletters to him; she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks himsomething godlike, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.(54)As they are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Dr.Swift's are found pretty often in Vannessa's parlour. He likes to beadmired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman of great tasteand spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day;he does not tell Stella about the business: until the impetuous Vanessabecomes too fond of him, until the doctor is quite frightened by the youngwoman's ardour, and confounded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neitherof them--that I believe was the truth; but if he had not married Stella,Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. When he went back toIreland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued thefugitive Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied;the news of the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, and itkilled her--she died of that passion.(55)

  And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifullyregarding her, "That doesn't surprise me," said Mrs. Stella, "for we allknow the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick." A woman--a truewoman! Would you have had one of them forgive the other?

  In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, ofDublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, onwhich are written in the Dean's hand, the words: "_Only a woman's hair_."An instance, says Scott, of the Dean's desire to veil his feelings underthe mask of cynical indifference.

  See the various notions of critics! Do those words indicate indifferenceor an attempt to hide feeling? Did you ever hear or read four words morepathetic? Only a woman's hair; only love, only fidelity, only purity,innocence, beauty; only the tenderest heart in the world stricken andwounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, loveinsulted, and pitiless desertion:--only that lock of hair left; and memoryand remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave ofhis victim.

  And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. Treasures ofwit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man have had locked up inthe caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom hetook in there. But it was not good to visit that place. People did notremain there long, and suffered for having been there.(56) He shrank awayfrom all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died nearhim, and away from him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He brokefrom his fastest friend, Sheridan; he slunk away from his fondest admirer,Pope. His laugh jars on one's ear after sevenscore years. He was alwaysalone--alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet smilecame and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closedover him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man heseems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling.We have other great names to mention--none, I think, however, so great orso gloomy.